Extended Hearts and Unheard Herds

 WITH THE HEART AS HUNTER

Ensemble Ernst’s “Xtended Hearts and Unheard Herds” is the second release on LAWO Classics by the distinguished contemporary music ensemble. This album is a continuation of their first, “… BUT …”, as they combine their own commissions with works with international appeal. Their intention is to let well-known names help Norwegian composers gain greater recognition worldwide. We hear works of the Norwegian composers Ragnhild Berstad, Jan Martin Smørdal and Jan Erik Mikalsen, together with Serbian-Swedish comoposer Djuro Zivkovic. The result is a contemporary music bag of sweets in which hopefully everyone can find a favourite.

This recording was made in Jar Church and NRK Radio Concert Hall on cold November afternoons in 2017. The recording process was a close collaboration between the ensemble, the recording company and the composers, and the result is, in our eyes, an important recording of the present for the future and for history. Ensemble Ernst was established in 1996, an offspring of the contemporary music ensemble at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Thomas Rimul has been the conductor from the start, and most of the musicians have been members since the very beginning.

The ensemble has specialised in recent contemporary music, focusing on composers such as Beat Furrer, Salvatore Sciarrino, Jonathan Harvey, and Iannis Xenakis, as well as actively commissioning music from Norwegian composers. The ensemble won the Fegersten Foundation’s music prize in 2004, and the Norwegian Society of Composers “Performer of the Year Award” in 2011. Together with Christian Blom and his computer-directed Al-Khowarizmis mechanical orchestra they won Spellemannprisen (Norway’s Grammy) for 2017 in the category “contemporary” for “Christian Blom — Bring me that Horizon”. Ensemble Ernst previously released “… BUT …” (LWC1085), with music of Nordheim, Sciarrino and Matre.

Djuro Zivkovic is a Serbian-Swedish composer residing in Stockholm. The title "On the Guarding of the Heart" suggests something of an inwardness and perhaps a somewhat old-fashioned sincerity that in today's post-ironic landscape can seem very refreshing. His Serbian background finds expression in elements of style that are easily associated with Eastern European traditional folk music, especially in his treatment of the piano. Repetitions of notes in pairs imitate the use of hammers when playing a cimbalom, and the cimbalom effect is further reinforced through extensive use of the sustain pedal. The long notes in the opening cause one to think of other, more drone-like instruments — a hurdy-gurdy perhaps? The music sounds at times almost modal, but does not feel that way for one reason or another. It alternates between explosive, energetic outbursts and long, sustained surfaces usually emphasizing traditionally laden intervals, such as a minor third or a tritone. Sad melodies are heard against the fleeting background of trills and tonal garlands. It is strange music that seems firmly rooted in its more local traditions, yet is fully from our time. The composer also succeeds in expressing intense pathos that moves us in its sincerity. The music's often simple structure (a long drone on a fifth, for example) makes it perhaps a very attractive alternative to new amateurism, the direction which, to a great extent, has been critical of a lot of contemporary music's most exaggerated complexity.

Ragnhild Berstad has told of sitting in the tram from downtown Oslo to Ekeberg when she was quite young and listening for melodies and overtones as the carriage creaked and whined against the rails and tram wires. After studying guitar at Oslo Conservatory of Music, she applied to study composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music. There she participated in Lasse Thoresen's experimental surprise package course, Sonology 3, which was characterized by a "finding your path as you go" approach. Something of the course content: transcriptions of traditional folk music, including milk-maids' songs and cattle calls. Listening to the world around her (exemplified by the tram) in a musical context; likewise, using fragments of traditional folk music melodies — these are for Berstad important recurring themes. What it amounts to is musical interpretation of all imaginable physical phenomena in her immediate surroundings, and — especially when writing for voice — elements of style that impart associations with transformed traditional folk song. She can also hear a bird in the forest and use the experience in music, without reproducing the sound exactly like a bird. The material she uses can be bird-like, without one needing to know that it is a specific bird, as was the case with Olivier Messiaen. Another obvious influence is spectralism of the French school. Put somewhat simply, spectral music was originally a matter of isolating given qualities of a particular sound and letting these become the main focus of the musical progression. For example, the sequence attack-sound-fading of one note can be extended to a sequence lasting many minutes, generally referred to as a spectromorphological approach: the sound's gradual development, the manner in which it "morphs" over time, is the main idea. It was gradually realized that sequences of this kind, which often become strikingly organic, could be interpreted allegorically for other phenomena. They were developed to become new ways of making musical sequences, liberated from old hierarchies with sharply defined boundaries between bass, harmony and melody. In a spectral context, one views music in large measure as an object or a state that changes organically over time. The inspiration behind the music of Berstad is taken from a way of listening to the world, usually nature, and she poeticizes it and represents it so distinctively nuanced that one does not necessarily think of the music as a direct depiction of nature. Are the structures at the beginning of this piece birds or milk-maids, or have they morphed into something between the two? It is not so important, but when listening to Berstad's music, one definitely has the experience of inhabiting a special world in close kinship with nature.

Jan Martin Smørdal has a background in various forms of jazz, pop and rock, and he was in his younger days seriously interested in extreme metal music. He was musical producer for the first album of Rockettothesky (Jenny Hval) and is a frequent visitor in pop music territories. He has, in parallel with this and to an ever increasing degree, established himself as an important innovative composer in the classical music field. In "(herd)STUDY," Smørdal has attempted to explore different ways in which the musicians and the pitches can behave like a "flock." They can act completely synchronously, as in the opening, with statically repeated chords; they can swarm; or they can be entirely separated points. Auditively, this piece is mainly about the first and last-mentioned categories: the long static chords at the beginning find their rejoinder circa midway in the piece with a new series of sustained chords, but the second time the chords evolve to some extent and become increasingly dramatic. Between and following these stretches with long chords we find episodes that are characterized more by points, more or less static. From the beginning, these episodes seem indeed episodic and separate, with little linking between the one structure and the next. A rapid piano figure in the high register, used three times in the course of the piece, functions virtually as an on/off button; it turns off the previous structure and gets the new one going. The process to which these episodes are subjected is a gradual microtonal distortion, like turning a camera lens and bringing them out of focus, letting the notes or chords bleed microtonally upwards and downwards. This simultaneous rising and falling movement soon has a structural consequence, inasmuch as the various layers of points begin to move chromatically upwards and downwards. Toward the end of the piece there is a long point sequence in which all the musicians each have their own rhythmic duration. It is a simple principle, but nonetheless a rather complex construction that is based on meticulously notated polymetre, in this case 15 different metres running simultaneously. They meet at a starting point, and the composer has said that had they had to meet at the same point again, it would have happened over 18,000 (!) years later. This structure is not interrupted, but is rather, step by step, phased out of longer chords, leading the piece more organically over into its last phase, where it all ends quite abruptly. A small coda with white noise suggests that the piece essentially could have gone on considerably longer. Smørdal says himself that the piece was written as a series of separate episodes, which he later connected in different ways. He sees that the piece can be interpreted as becoming progressively cohesive more toward the end than in the beginning, but he does not believe this development was intended on his part.

While growing up in Kristiansund, Jan Erik Mikalsen lived for a time on the second floor above his family's video rental shop. So at an early age he got his dose of horror movie music from the films he was able to borrow free of charge and view as many times as he wished. His early pieces in particular often had elements of musical expression one could associate with horror films. Now his sound images have moved more in the direction of Giacinto Scelsi's, with a palette of timbres that is perhaps a bit more spectacular. Yet one can still sense the influence of the darker side of Hollywood, with its intense drama and fierce orchestral brilliance.

"Jeger" is an exquisite little gem of a jest. It was written for Bodø Sinfonietta's concert in 2014 celebrating the bicentenary of the Norwegian constitution. A handful of composers were asked to write a piece, each lasting exactly 2'14". Because it was a national celebration, Mikalsen chose "Gammel Jegermarsj" ("Old Rangers March"), which elegantly, yet likewise "sourly" and perhaps in a somewhat careworn manner, is suggestive of the typically scintillating-sourish chords of Mikalsen. It can be tempting to make comparisons to the Danish bonbon "Søppeldynga" ("garbage dump"), with the tastes of salty liquorice and raspberry drops side by side — Mikalsen is sort of pure and sour at the same time. The piece ends abruptly during the second playing of the refrain, for Mikalsen had come to precisely 2 minutes and 14 seconds in his tempo. In the version on this album, the piece lasts 2 minutes and 48 seconds.

— Jon Øivind Ness